and let’s get BACK into space!

Purple glistening plasma, you say? Orion plummets back to Earth

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Asteroid Blues: The Lasting Legacy of Cowboy Bebop

What they said. And what we said.

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XKCD has a point, but NASA made a big dent in that ‘space deficit’ today – huge kudos!

NASA: ‘There’s your new spacecraft, America!”

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While I’m not as stoked for this as I was for the second coming of TRON – and was somewhat disappointed – doh! – I have to say, this looks pretty good. Now to avoid watching any other trailers to avoid spoilers for just over a year……

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I’m on a John Scalzi kick – catching up his past several books I hadn’t got round to reading yet. So after the recent Human Division read, I just finished Agent to the Stars, actually his first full-length novel that he originally published for free, but then later after he’d had some success, his publisher found the book online on his site and asked to publish it.

Pretty good story, engaging even if a bit predictable. And as seen in later books, he’s not above scatological humor by any means – this may have been where it all started. And there are other funny bits in here, if you like your pop culture references. But I liked the characters, too and it’s definitely an interesting premise, even if it seems to have been inspired in part by The Simulacra and The Star Beast in parts, with a bit of Clans of the Alphane Moon thrown in (one of the main characters here definitely reminds me of Lord Running Clam in the earlier PKD book).

But none of that is bad stuff, and it’s an entertaining read. Check it out – you can still read it online here.

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The original Lord of Kobol has passed away – R.I.P.

‘Knight Rider,’ ‘Battlestar Galactica’ creator Glen Larson dies

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Calculating the cost of Calvin and Hobbes’ shenanigans

Actual ‘study’ link here.

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Cosmic first: European spacecraft lands on comet

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Finally got around to reading another John Scalzi book, this one being The Human Division. I had heard about this book some time ago – it was published originally online as a series of stories set in the Old Man’s War universe, then consolidated into a book with some extras when it came out in hardcover.

I liked it – it presents effectively the other perspective after the ending of the Old Man’s War trilogy – that of the Colonial Union trying to get Earth back in the fold. And it doesn’t present a straight narrative – kind of jumps around to follow the main characters through different situations – sometimes the transitions are rather abrupt but it still all holds together pretty well.

I also liked that true to form, he tries to inject direct and subtle humor in many places along the way. These days, while I like the crazy, over the top ‘serious’ sci-fi like anyone else, I also appreciate when humor is used – it just softens the tone of a given book and humanizes the characters so much more, IMHO.

One other interesting angle is how he veers around the backstories between the main characters – most usually start out fairly sarcastic or intense – but then he takes the time to make them more three-dimensional – even in very small ways. Nice touch.

While I was disappointed that the ending is rather open-ended, I guess that’s life (not a ‘hollywood ending’) and, it potentially means he’ll revisit stories in this ‘universe’ again in the not-too-distant future.

Now, to read some of his other back catalog of books….

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